If you download this mod leave a comment about what sucks and would could be better please While i do it just for fun, and use it myself extensively i still like to know if this is better or worse to original fx graphics. As the one creating it i am not really able to judge it ;p
Updated to Version 02
Lo, i found some nasty error in the previous mod (i accidentally forgot to change an important value!) so now the smoke will actually stay longer.
This mod changes smoke to last longer and be denser, but not too dense
Also this mod uses a particles.dds that has the color map of the original and my alpha maps (which i think look great together)
This is the final version of the mod - I am happy with the smoke and all things nowâŚ
Changes in V02 compared to V01
Made the mod actually do what it was supposed to do
Smoke now has again some grey values so that it is not a humongous black mass
Most smoke effects now have not 100% density so as to allow you still seeing something
What does it do?
-Smoke from fighter deaths and anti fighter explosions now really lasts longer (sorry about before!)
-Large explosions will now cover substantial amounts of ship estate with smoke
-Makes smoke less fluffy
-Death Explosion causes huge smoke coverage
-Wreckage smoke now spawns slower and wider fx mod v02.rar (114 KB)
Photoshop Cs3 with Nvidia DDS plugin Oh yeah⌠i figure some people here have been writing about white boxes when saving dds files
To save the file after you edited it you have to select
5DXT - ARGB - 8bit Interpolated Alpha - all game files use 8bit alpha (that means alpha with grey values)
Edit: Of course, the other thing is that you have to edit both RGB and Alpha channel (in photoshop you can click on Channels and select the one you want) and when making new hulls, once also has to make a alpha channel (many ways for that ,p)
My only beef atm is that the explosions that have a sprite sequence are all in one file, what sounds nice for ordering files is a horrible way to save animations because it doesnât allow for overglow (that means that explosions connect when blended in some fashion) because the frame sizes can not be increased
sorry i forgot that i deleted the install description in the update ;p
After you extracted the rar the particleconfigs and bitmaps folder go both into \Positech Games\Gratuitous Space Battles\data
If you have the Impulse version its under C:\Program Files (x86)\Positech Games\Gratuitous Space Battles\data
For other versions i do not know
You can also choose not to overwrite the bitmaps folder, you get the same long staying smoke with the original graphics (might wanna try how both things look before you overwrite something)
If you want to revert you can just check for update in impulse and it will redownload original files
really? i didnât get bitmaps or particleconfigs folder when i downloaded your mod â only the mod itself. or do you mean that i copy and extract the mod into both folders?
I believe you donât know that i have a mac OS X and that iâm using crossover, a PC emulator. usually, all i have to do is download it, put it in the folder, and bang. do the same rules apply for PC as they do Mac? EDIT: Ok, hereâs the easy way. just tell me which format it must be in and where it must go and itâll work. probably.
whether youâre using crossover or not wonât make a blind bit of difference to the pc files/paths.
the rar contains a folder called âmodâ. that contains two other folders. those two folders need copying into the GSB-install/data directory. the âmodâ folder is just a holder - itâs irrelevant (and arguably confusing, but at this stage of game modding youâre blitting straight over core game files, so i can understand why modders might make it such that their mods do no damage at all unless you know what/are sure of what youâre doing).
grrrr. i said already, it only downloads the mod itself. do i somehow have to get into the mod and find the folders? only the rar installs. itâs a file, not a folder.
Hybrinoid, the other players have provided good advice for you. All you need to do is adapt it to your circumstances, as I have.
Iâm also a Mac user, with a constructive suggestion for you: the problem may not necessarily lie with the mod, but with the Mac. Read onâŚ
You need to do some homework and find an app that you can install which knows how to play nicely with archive types that lie just outside of those of the standard Mac user environment
The app called BOMArchiveHelper built into OS X is not robust enough to correctly work with .rar archives. Even Apple itself admits this. I have had good fortune with The Unarchiver, which is now up to version 2.1. If you wish to try it, it can be found here on the Apple website. I find it vastly more useful than BOMA, or even Stuffit Expander.
I can easily extract the mod within the .rar archive and it beautifully opens into all of its component parts. Itâs not a single monolithic file. From there, installation should be easy.
thanks. and BTW where do you receive this homework? xD EDIT: Hooray! It worked! Looks like I did have to extract it after all, instead of just putting it into the folder! But the reason i didnât actually try to extract it is because i donât have to do that with txt files. i thought it was all the same. yay, now i can do rar! hooray!
You have to open that mod.rar file or extract it or unrar it. Itâs a compressed packet which you have to uncompress. Then it contains files inside it.
Itâs like opening a christmas present. The nice looking packet itself with those nice looking papers isnât the present itself but what is inside is the real present.
Start to get it? You need to open that mod.rar file then you see those folders which you need to copy.
You know, thats a real funny issue though - i never figured mac osx wouldnât give the option to unpack a rar (at least from alone), thats pretty much the mainstay archive format (and unlike zip, i packs dds files wonderfully ,p). Well i hope it works fine, and that said - i still havenât received a single post of feedback
You know, does it suck or not? What sucks, and what not⌠;p
I should probably pack my next mod as zip file though
Edit: That aside - the MOD folder is a protection indeed⌠At this stage these mods modify core files so not only can they break your game any version (works still fine with 1.18 afaik) but they also not removable without a reinstall - this is different from the item/weapon mods that are simple parsed by the game and so donât need to overwrite anything.